Good morning, guten Morgen. Thank you for being here for these six days, this week. Danke, dass ihr für diese eine Woche, für diese sechs Tage hierher gekommen seid. So during a practice week we're trying to recreate something close to what daily life in a Zen monastery is like. We have, I mean, in a Zen monastery you only have lectures every two or three days and seminar discussion every three or four days. Here we have it every day but you know this is a special week. Then we get up a little later but

[01:02]

we get up at 4.30 instead of 3.30. If you're not here for three months, I think 4.30 is early enough. The idea, of course, of getting up early is partly that We get up because we get up ideally a little before dawn. We're working with the rhythm of the day, but we're also establishing our own rhythm. And we want to have a little less sleep than we need because we kind of mix night mind and day mind. And we find our way to... We find a way to find our energy in situations, through situations.

[02:42]

And we just ideally follow the schedule. So choice is... Choices. Many choices are taken away. So there's food and A schedule and you just follow it. And you notice when you resist it, don't like the idea of following it. Yeah, we're not harming anything by following the schedule. Yeah, but sometimes we really need our own choice, and then you can notice when you need your own choice.

[03:45]

So it's only for a week. And you can explore these different aspects of... having choice removed and so forth. And what is the idea of a schedule like this? Yeah, basically it's so that you can practice the Dharma. Yeah, and that's our topic. This week the topic is Dharma. So what is Dharma? Why does this kind of schedule

[04:46]

this kind of daily life, lend itself to practicing the Dharma. Yeah, so, you know, and I hope the idea is also this week like this, which is somewhat monastic, It will give you a feel for practice that you can bring into your daily life. So what does the word Dharma mean? The word itself means something like what holds, what stays in place. Yeah, Buddhism is rooted in the

[06:00]

observation that absolutely everything changes. So what stays in place? Now, given us human beings who want something, to believe something is permanent or, you know, kind of, ultimately real. The idea of Dharma, particularly in China, sometimes slips into some kind of ground of being or ultimately real thing beyond change. We haven't worked together as translating.

[07:13]

too often, a few times. My sentence is short enough? Short enough. So even in Buddhism, there's a tendency, we have this longing for something that's ultimately real. But Buddhism teaches, particularly Yogacara Zen, that dharmas are ultimately real. letztendlich real sind. Is ultimately real something that's easy to translate? No, it's not so easy to translate, yeah. Ultimately, wie würde man das am besten übersetzen?

[08:30]

Letztendlich. Letztendlich, ja. Also letztendlich real. Okay. Now, if everything's changing, also wenn alles sich ändert, here I'm bringing up Yeah, some ideas. That I think I want to be part of the soup of our thinking and feeling during this week. If everything changes... How can there be something that doesn't change? What can hold? Now this is, you know, for seekers, these are real questions. What is ultimately real?

[09:46]

And if dharma is what holds, then dharmas are related to our experience of duration. In that sense, the present The experience of the present is a dharma. Because we have the experience of a present in which we function even though it's immediately becoming the past. If it's immediately becoming the past, then the present doesn't exist. In some scientific sense. But we and insects and birds and animals all have an experience of a present in which we function.

[10:54]

But You know, I think just logically you can accept then that the present is something we establish in and through ourselves. So if the present is a dharma in that sense, the present is something we establish in and through ourselves. Doesn't exist in some fundamental sense, maybe, but it exists in and through ourselves. Yeah. And then I presume I'm not an insect. I'm not Kafka.

[12:03]

Either. I presume that insects have a different present than we do. Might be interesting then. And then if that's the case, then each of us has a different present. Wenn das der Fall ist, dann hat jeder von uns eine andere Gegenwart. So let's assume that during this week we have a week together. Lass uns mal annehmen, während dieser Woche haben wir eine Woche zusammen. But for each of us, the week and the immediate present is actually present. somewhat different. And then to be aware of how we share, how we generate a shared presence and a shared week. And our schedule actually helps us notice this.

[13:15]

Sukhyoshi, my teacher, used to say, when you're all sitting the same way in the zendo, I can look at your backs. Because you're all sitting the same way, I can see your differences quite clearly. So by us all following the same schedule for a week, we... enter into a territory of similarity and difference.

[14:18]

Now dharmas again are defined as what is ultimately real. Now particularly this is emphasized Now I think it's important to know that this emphasis took some centuries to become clear. It's not just a simple idea. Because what's ultimately real means some things are less real. And it implies that we should give priority to what's ultimately real.

[15:53]

In fact, our practice is to give exclusive, exclusive, the main, the main emphasis, exclusive emphasis even, to what's ultimately real. Yeah, no. Why are we concerned with what's ultimately real? Because really, in this world of suffering and change, what can we depend on? So the question behind all this is, what can we depend on? Is there anything to depend on? if everything's changed. Yeah. Now, How can I say this?

[16:57]

This is not just a philosophical question. And this is not, I would even say, a teaching. It's a training. It's teaching a training. And as a training it produces certain kinds of results. And it produces sometimes unexpected results. Yeah, I mean, in a simple sense, maybe you go jogging so you can run faster or feel better. But it has results that just aren't because you happen to go running every day. Yeah, I mean, you don't overdo it. You might even live 10 years longer. So if you do a training, there's results that are...

[18:00]

that come from the training that are not present when it's in a philosophical truth. Okay. Okay. It says in the Heart Sutra that we chant in the morning, this is true, not false. Here's this emphasis again on falsehood. What is true? And as I said, this emphasis has taken some centuries to come to in Buddhism. So it's an experimental emphasis. truth, an experimental path as well.

[19:23]

If we as seekers are emphasizing trying to discover what is true, what is ultimately real, is everyone seeking what is true? Well, actually not. People would say so, but really most people are not. The world is divided into believers and seekers. Of course, we're all a combination. believers and seekers simultaneously. You grow, you know, you're born, you kind of believe your parents.

[20:37]

You look around you. You look around you, believe your pillow is there. Maybe you believe your blanket will always be there. In America it's called the blankie. Blankie? Blankie, yeah. Kids have their blankie like their guardian angel. A schmooze deck. My daughter still sleeps with a little piece of her pink blanket 40 years, 45 years later. Oh, I shouldn't tell. I actually own this blanket, though. One day when she was about three, we were sitting in a car in the back seat and she said, Papa, will you buy my blanket?

[21:45]

I said, do you really want to sell it? She said that? Yeah, she said, do you really want to sell it? I said to her, do you really want to sell it? And she said, yes. I said, how much do you want for it? She said, a dollar. So I gave her a dollar and she gave me the blanket. And I had it for about less than five minutes. And she said, can I borrow it? So I said, oh sure, you can borrow it. So I loaned it back to her. And 44 years later, she still has it. And 44 years later she has this blanket.

[22:51]

Maybe it's important to her that it's mine. Okay. So anyway, you believe your parents to some extent and your blanket and things like that. But maybe as well as your parents, you also believe your perception of the blanket. As I said the other day in the seminar, you know, it's been shown that kids... in very tiny kids, I can't remember how old, I mean infants, can know what's three, what's four, what's two objects, et cetera. They don't know the difference between 12 and 13 objects, but they know the difference between up to four objects. So the idea of at least number in a simple sense is a perceptual reality rather independent of culture.

[24:03]

So you grow up with this perceptual reality? And a cultural reality. And we make some agreement between the two. Mm-hmm. But on the whole, for most of us, it's easier to believe the culture and the shared reality with others. But what is the shared reality with others? It's not necessarily just... The cultural reality.

[25:10]

Can we distinguish between the two? What of our shared reality is culturally determined and what is not? Yeah, maybe more fundamentally determined. Yeah, this is the practice of Dharma. There's an Australian woman I read about recently who's made a fortune on a DVD. She's a documentary filmmaker, Australian. And she made this 90-some minute documentary called The Secret. And it's supposedly a secret documentary been hidden for millenniums.

[26:26]

Yeah, and so she wrote a book in three weeks or so, which called The Secret, I believe. And through the internet and so forth, it's now sold all over the world, and she's become a multimillionaire. And the secret that's been hidden for millennia is ask, believe, receive. Ask, believe, receive. Okay, and now there's societies dedicated to the secret developing in America, of course, and other places.

[27:39]

An op for Winfrey has devoted shows to her. Oprah Winfrey. And Oprah Winfrey. You know who that is? No. She's a black woman who runs a talk show in America and is one of the richest people in the world. Yeah. You know, it's sort of like not knowing who Oprah Winfrey is, it's sort of like not knowing who Marilyn Monroe is. In America, you have to watch television. I don't watch television, but she has her own magazine. Anyway. But, you know, Buddhism would say, yes, maybe believe and then you will receive, is maybe a good psychological strategy.

[28:50]

But it's not what's ultimately real. Nor the secret that has been hidden for millennia. But it's interesting because this is a person who has... I said all of us are both seekers and believers. And now in only a few months there are millions of people who are trying to seek through believing. So anyway, there are seekers and believers.

[29:55]

And most of us somehow seek through belief and not through what's ultimately real. But what is ultimately real? And we don't have many promises. We can't promise you you're going to get rich if you... practice the Dharma. I'm sorry. You might get free of mental suffering, which might be better than being rich. I don't know. Okay, so what? I can't go on forever here. What does Buddhism, Yogacara, Zen take as ultimately real?

[30:59]

First of all, primarily, perception. Yeah, physical perception. If somebody is anxious or having a sort of collapse, they sometimes want to just go wash the dishes. Yeah, and they do that because, you know, doing something with your hands, just washing the dishes, can be restorative. But what they're doing is trying to limit their emotional feeling, mental reality to some kind of physical grounding.

[32:08]

So one of the beginning practice in the and a beginning practice in Zen Die beginnende Praxis, die Anfangspraxis in Zen, is something like just this. Ist so etwas wie einfach nur das. And nothing else. Und nichts anderes. Just this and nothing else. Nur das und nichts anderes. And you try this out. Und versuch das. Yeah, so I have this stick. Also ich habe diesen Stab. So just this is... The feel of it. And the look of it. And the sound of it. And right now, what's just this for you?

[33:09]

Yeah, the sound of my voice and the sound of Otmar's voice. And whatever other sounds there are. And the feel of the... You're sitting and the floor and the cushion. And you're breathing. And, yeah, what you see. Now Zen says, it's really hard to say what's ultimately real. So let's start with... the most real that we can find. And let's see if we give that priority above any other kind of realness. So if you were going to practice this training this week, you would... I would suggest you use the phrase, just this.

[34:32]

Is it work in German okay, too? Nur das? And... Bring your attention to the physicality of each percept through the phrase. Until you're resting in The physicality, the physical perceptual world. Now something happens when you do this. It's like a chemical reaction. You pour something into... A liquid and then something happens when you pour it in.

[35:37]

So you're pouring into your activity. In the schedule. The phrase, just this. And through the phrase, just this, you're pouring in, you're limiting your experience to your actual perceptions. Yeah, before, a while ago, I made myself a cup of tea, a bowl of tea with you know, powdered Japanese tea. Yeah, so what did I notice? Yeah, well, it's a kind of grayish, broken and now repaired tea bowl. That's kind of shiny, the sun from the window. shined on it.

[36:57]

So, you know, that's a just this. The sun reflecting on the bowl. Yeah, we could say from a point of view of Zen, that's an ultimately real, that's a Dharma. Yeah, and then I have tried to mix the water and the I hold the bowl and I feel the bowl. The feel of the bowl is ultimately a dharma and ultimately real. And then I drink the tea. And there's the taste of it.

[37:59]

That's ultimately real. That's a Dharma. Okay. But is the bowl ultimately real? No, that's a concept. But is the function of the bowl ultimately real? Yes. I mean, I used it, I drank from it. It's part of the experience. It's ultimately real. So its function is a dharma, but its thingness is not a dharma. Yeah, I could make it a hat. Or I could make it a place to throw old matches, because having been broken, it leaks. So what we're limiting ourselves to is we really experience the function.

[39:20]

We don't experience the boldness. So let's deal with the boldness later. Hear the practices, the entry practice, the entry Dharma practice, is to limit yourself to just this, actual experience, without concepts, as much as possible. and see if we can do it for a week. If you just get a feel for it, A little bit this week you can bring it into your daily life. You try to seek through the phrase just this. And it's an experiment.

[40:21]

You experiment with a path seeking the ultimately real Using the phrase just this. To direct your attention. To each percept. And if you can work with it, you'll develop a percept-only mind. Perhaps not 100% percept-only, but percept-only. That's the emphasis.

[41:30]

Percept only consciousness, this emphasis. This is an entry, basic entry into Dharma practice. Thanks. May God bless you.

[42:03]

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